The Disaster of the House of Notables, by Amira Ghenim: behind the doors

What is this disaster announced in the title of Amira Ghenim’s novel? A stone thrown in the window of the Rassaa and Naifer families: Zbeida Rasaa, married to Mohsen Naifer, is said to be having an affair with Tahar Haddad, a progressive intellectual – “heretic”, say the notables -: a note from him addressed to her there and hidden in a loaf of bread was intercepted by M’hammed, Mohsen’s brother.

Do we really know the nature of their relationship? No one would swear to it but everyone likes to interpret the information as they see fit. From this argument follows a broad and profound novel. It is signed by a Tunisian novelist who writes in Arabic, and constitutes a double dive: into the history of a country worked since the 1930s by emancipation (the creation of Destour dates back to the 1920s) and into that of two families from Tunis. We meet magistrates and hierarchs there and each, as we suspect, conceals tears and secrets that the beautiful doors of…